The Medical men are not satisfied with the compromise they
obtained last Session in relation to the Vivisection Bill, and two at least of the medical Addresses delivered at the opening of this term have bitterly attacked the Act. At the London Hospital, Dr. Andrew Clark, in an address which shows how very weak an exceedingly able man can be when he allows himself to be the exponent of a Trades' Union feeling, stated that the infliction of suffering for ulterior ends pervaded the whole structure and relations of civilised life. "What are all the sufferings inflicted by all the vivisectionists of all the world, in comparison with the hecatombs of suffering which poli- tical experimenters have inflicted on mankind in their attempts to settle the question of the balance of power in Europe ?" Why, the worthy physician might just as well have apologised for the Bulgarian tortures on a similar ground,—namely, that when you add them all together, they won't compare for a moment in amount, not merely with the sufferings inflicted in the attempt to settle the question of the balance of power, but, probably enough, with the sufferings inflicted by medical men themselves in past times, in clumsy attempts to cure diseases they did not understand. What makes the Bulgarian tortures so horrible is that they were deliberately inflicted, with the full knowledge that nothing but pain would come out of them to the victims. And though, of course, no just-minded man will for a moment compare the tortures reluctantly inflicted on animals from a humane desire to diminish human suffering,— where that, and not mere scientific curiosity is really the motive, —with tortures inflicted out of the fullness of a cruel heart, it is the intolerable injustice and hardness involved in the policy of deliberately torturing an innocent, sensitive creature, for the chance of relieving a few other sensitive creatures, not more inno- cent, which makes this practice so offensive to the public, and so especially dangerous for men who devote themselves to the heal- ing art. Dr. Andrew Clark would have served his purpose better by silence. His zeal was too much for his discretion.
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